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Resources updated between Monday, August 19, 2013 and Sunday, August 25, 2013

August 25, 2013

Damage from a rocket near Nahariya, Israel (Channel 2)

At the United Nations, self-defense for Israel has long been a theoretical right. Every time it is actually used, it's a problem. Last Thursday, four rockets from Lebanese territory targeted northern Israel, one of them falling close to a home occupied by Holocaust survivors. Israel responded the following day by specifically targeting and bombing a terrorist base in Lebanon. So what did the UN do? Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a statement in which he said, on the one hand, "the firing of rockets" - no name, no perpetrator, no use of the word terrorist - was a violation of Security Council resolution 1701. And, on the other hand, Israel's "retaliatory strikes" drew this: "The Secretary-General...condemns any and all violations of resolution 1701... He urges all concerned to exercise maximum restraint and cooperate with UNIFIL, in order to prevent an escalation. The parties must fully adhere to resolution 1701 (2006) and respect the cessation of hostilities agreement."

There should have been no other hand. There should have been "thank you Israel for responding quickly to the attempt by terrorists to broaden the Syrian conflict, divert attention from recent horrors there, and for demonstrating to real enemies that democracies are not all feckless weaklings cowering from the responsibility of defending freedom."

U.N. chemical weapons experts are now in Syria to investigate three purported chemical attacks that took place months ago. Allowing the investigators into the country took months of negotiations between the U.N. and the Assad government. And even then, their mandate "is limited to those three sites...and it is only charged with determining whether chemical weapons were used, not who used them." So after the most recent alleged chemical weapons attack, will President Obama wait for UN inspectors to gain access to one more site? Will he depend on the UN to find whether chemical weapons were used, but not who used them? And where would the rudderless White House go from there? After all, the UN is Obama's go-to authority - as he pounded should have been the case on Iraq. So if the UN gang can't get in, or won't say whodunnit, the man just might have to make a decision for himself.

UNRWA-backed summer camps for Palestinian children are indoctrination centers for antisemitism and the promotion of violence. Watch the disturbing spectacle of how children are taught intolerance, a thirst for blood, envy and greed.

Drawing pictures of all of Israel as Palestine, and chanting 'from the river to the sea,' this summer another batch of Palestinian youth has been programmed to make war and to murder their Jewish neighbors. Where are all the phony UN human rights experts and delegations and investigators and high commissioners and councils and commissions and reporters? The enablers are nowhere to be seen. Now imagine if the teachers and campers were Israeli.

Under fire after the video's release, UNRWA issued a statement denying wrongdoing by saying in part that some of the video was "a third party's activities inside what is indeed an UNRWA installation." This is the UN's standard response to all of its intense anti-Israel and anti-Jewish activities conducted on a global scale: it is merely a shell with no responsibility for what transpires inside the belly of the beast. But if any Jewish organization committed to combating antisemitism were to try to book the same UNRWA facility - in an effort to detoxify Palestinian children - it would be unavailable. There is no chance that every single UNRWA employee was blissfully ignorant about what was going on in their facilities. And obviously, UNRWA's installations are built and maintained with UNRWA funds. This isn't guilt by association. It's just plain guilt.

Only last week, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon admitted to Israeli students while in Jerusalem - in response to a question - that there was bias against Israel at the UN. Apparently, such an admission didn't sit too well with his UN handlers and the anti-Israel majority that drives the bias at the General Assembly, the UN Human Rights Council, the UN Commission on the Status of Women, the International Labor Organization, the World Health Organization...etc etc So on Monday, Ban added a "not" after reporters asked him to explain the statement. Ban said: "No, I don't think there is discrimination against Israel at the United Nations." There isn't any other way to say it. The Secretary-General of the United Nations is a liar.

The UN is supporting
summer camps for Palestinian children that teach them how to jump rope, paint watercolors, and hate Jews. A chilling documentary entitled "Camp Jihad" is now exposing the antisemitism that runs through the fabric of today's UN. UNRWA-backed camps not only teach Palestinian children to hate, but to turn that hate into a thirst for violence. As one of the teachers in the film states: "(w)ith God's help and our own strength we will wage war. And with education and Jihad we will return to our homes!" The camp's indoctrination of these children is simple but effective: 1) concoct a fairy tale image of Palestine before the Jews - one of beaches, cars, boats, and villas, 2) describe the story of the creation of the state of Israel as a "Nabka" - or catastrophe - in which they were robbed of their homes in Israel, and 3) inspire them to yearn to return by Jihad to their "ancestral" villages. The director of the camp, Amina Hinawi, is profuse in her thanks specifically for the support of UNRWA in making this camp possible.

Unfortunately, thanks should also go to the United States and the American taxpayer - the largest single donor to UNRWA. The excuses for funding the next generation of Palestinians who hate Israel and want war have to stop.